Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Me as Rosemary's Baby, Ava as The Rocketeer, Lisa as Medusa, and Burger as a Jack O' Lantern. I am stuck on Hallowe'en today. In real life we plan to be Winnie the Pooh characters, if we can just get motivated and actually make the costumes. We are busy people.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Tuesday evening was pretty motivated. Lisa made a joke about the Sorry pawn in the card shop looking like it had wings (supposed to be a reflection). She said all it needed was a "Corn", a unicorn horn. She insisted I draw a pawn with pegasus wings and a 'corn.

I went for a quick drawing of a whole game. It's sort of a cross between Cooties and Candyland. My mistake (or genius) was in making the darn thing look playable, and sort of fun; Once I had drawn the gameboard, I knew I just had to play the game.

We drew a full-sized board and play-tested it and made some rule adjustments. Once we were satisfied with the layout and play we broke out the ol' Crayolas.

Half the fun of this game is messing with the pieces and their accoutrements. The wings we cut from a disposable plastic bowl, the horn (err... corn) is from an Archie McPhee Avenging Unicorn playset I won from The Sneeze years ago. We only had one corn so we used toothpicks for the rest. You can already tell it will (not) be a big hit with children's game publishers. Everything is looped on to the top of the Sorry pieces with ancient orthodontics gumbands. They go on and off easily.

It's a fun game with some depth. Which way to go at the crossroads? The wings make you so fast but that 6 is a bear without the 'corn. I hope we will get to play it a lot. I am curious how it will play with more players.

Please let me know if you are super awesome and play it at home. Print out the board and whip up your own pieces and parts. I am totally serious.

I was learning about Zzyzx Road recently and learned that the mineral springs in Zzyzx, CA are home to an endangered species of chub fish. This is the first I had heard of a chub, and I wondered what this one looked like. Couldn't find a picture so I drew it myself.

I was inspired in my research by a photo from Athena. As she and her sister were driving to LA from Las Vegas, she said, "Oh, take a picture of that Zzyzx Rd sign, I have to show it to my coworker who has no vowels in his last name. " Thanks for thinking of me, Athena!

Friday, October 3, 2008

1. The CastleThis game is great and fast. Adversarial enough that you're interacting, luck-based enough to keep it peaceful.

Other favorites around Casa De Przy:

2. BattlegroundThis kids' game is a good change of pace when you are done masterminding each other in Othello.

3. Milles BornesThis classic French card game is one of the few head-to-head games that is just as good with four players. So you can play each other and then scale up when you have company. The bilingual cards and excellent art are a big bonus. Have definitely seen this at Target. Must get the "collector's edition" with the old art. New version = poo.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Hounddog, a controversial recent release with Dakota Fanning is generally considered to be sucky by just as many critics, but reviews for it tend to be more on-topic. Actually they seem to be a chance for critics to show off just how erudite they are; mentions of "Southern Gothic" and Flannery freakin O'Connor abound.

Check out these highlights from the effigerrific reviews for Cook's new "My Best Friend's Girl". I'm glad they keep greenlighting more Dane Cook movies, personally. Seriously as long as he's making movies he's not doing terrible fratbait stand-up comedy. He's like the Family Guy of standup.

"Each round has Night and Day. Each night the werewolves will silently indicate a single victim to me. There is a Seer in the village. Each night the Seer will indicate a player to me and I'll let him know whether he's a werewolf or not.

"Then it's day, and I reveal the victim. He is dead, and he can't talk. Everyone picks someone to lynch. Then that person is dead too. Then it's night again, a new round.

"Rounds continue until1) all the werewolves are lynched, or2) the number of werewolves and villagers is equal, then the werewolves rise up and slaughter the rest of the villagers in broad daylight.

4. "It's dawn, everyone wake up and open your eyes. Alice has been torn to shreds by werewolves. Vote on someone to lynch. Bob has been killed by the mob."

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This is a fun game, and I recommend it. Definitely have fun with the atmosphere in your descriptions of the setting and the transformations of the werewolves, the visions of the Seer, the bloodthirsty justice of the lynchmob.

I have condensed the script here to make it easier to start up the game. I've only played the game a few times. It seemed like the reason the game wasn't broken out more often had to do with tricky setup and explanations. Now that I've written it out, it's apparent that you could easily play it sitting at a table or around a TV if the Moderator just said, "Hey, let's play Werewolf," and launched into it.

Other versions of the game call for cards, but that's not necessary. Any game this fun that can be played with nothing more than a crowd -- no dice, no cards, no board, no ball -- is really noteworthy.

Check out Zarf's Werewolf page for more details on how the game is played, the werewolf-to-villager odds, variations, the game's origins, and more. If this post is your first exposure to Werewolf, don't think you get it until you go to Zarf's page.